The increasing need for Internet connectivity places huge demands on Internet service providers, not just in the number and types of connections that users require for Internet access, but also in the services that these users require on each connection. The Internet's explosive growth is driving the requirements for higher quality, faster connectivity, greater reliability, and more software features for an ever-growing number of customers.
The edge of a service provider network, the point at which a customer's enterprise network intersects with the service provider network, is rapidly becoming an area of strategic significance. At the edge, network customers attach to the service provider's network and service providers can apply services and aggregate broadband and leased-line traffic. This has to be accomplished without compromising performance and reliability.
In particular, the broadband aggregation services market is rapidly evolving. Service provisioning and subscriber management offerings of products in this market have had limited availability, performance and scale.
It is therefore desirable to provide an edge network routing device capable of providing broadband services aggregation with high availability. Such broadband services can include PPP, L2TP and 802.1q type protocols. Such a device can provide value-added revenue generating services over a broadband access infrastructure and deliver superior availability, scalability, performance, dynamic quality of service capabilities and advanced network access services at a low cost.